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Are you using images to tell your story?

If you create beautiful products, like Milford, Michigan based Blackson Furniture you need to capture the moment with photos. When Blackson was tapped on the shoulder to help create a new entrance for Sparkies Bar and Grill they knew it would be a great opportunity to showcase their work. From the beginning of the project to the completion, Blackson documented the process with as many images as possible, these provide a nice platform to help tell their story as well as showing off their work. The story below provides insight to Sparkies request to help with their significant remodel investments.

Sparkies’ Bar & Grill of Highland

As a local favorite eatery, specializing in a diverse selection of American classic cuisine using the freshest ingredients from award winning crab soup to Baby Back Ribs, Sparkies Bar & Grill of Highland, Michigan decided to change things up. It was time for a remodeling. On busy Friday and Saturday nights, which are commonplace at Sparkies, you can expect to wait for a table for a little while. One of the reasons for the re-modeling was the tiny space between the hostess stand and the door where patrons crammed together on cold winter evenings waiting for a table. A larger waiting area was desperately needed, and had to be designed in harmony with the rest of the restaurant’s new distressed décor but also with the customers’ comfort in mind.

Steve Suser, Sparkies’ owner, reached out to Blackson Furniture about designing the perfect benches and table for the revamped waiting area. Understanding the requirements to match the restaurant’s décor and increased comfort, Blackson was given creative freedom to build the furniture and to start right away.

After first measurements, they decided to design an entirely new product family called PocketLine™. The materials used were Aluminum 6061, poplar hardwood and steel piping. Following its design, manufacturing and assembly, these pieces are now the first thing that customers see when entering Sparkies, and its owner couldn’t be more satisfied.

The dimensions ended up at 5 feet long for the benches, and 8 feet long for the table. From previous experience and extensive research, the team at Blackson knew that the ideal seating should be designed with bench seats sloping back 5 to 8 degrees. The backs would need to be somewhere between 5 to 15 degrees depending on how casual the furniture needed to be. In the end, the space was transformed and the new furniture fit perfectly inside the new Sparkies’.

“I asked Blackson Furniture to design and build benches and tables for the reception area of my newly remodeled restaurant. Their creativity, workmanship and professionalism exceeded all of my expectations. Their products will be a welcomed part of my restaurant’s atmosphere for years to come!” – Steve Suser, April 2015

Write for your audience

When writing a case study, white paper, blog post, tweet, or any other type of marketing material aimed at growing your business, do you ever stop and ask yourself “why should they care?” Sure, your business is a certified partner and preferred vendor with software companies X, Y, and Z, and you offer a wide range of solutions designed to fit any pain point but why should they care? What makes you different? Why is today different? Can they afford to wait another year before leveraging your solutions? If not, then why?

Way too often the marketing content that floods the digital stream of stimuli for IT managers, CTOs, CIOs, and other decision makers is bland, full of jargon, irrelevant, and actually causes adult-onset A.D.H.D. (not really, but I wouldn’t be surprised). Sure you may have a managed solution that will help their IT infrastructure to recover quickly in case of disaster but so what? This is a problem in the back of the minds of decision makers, but how do you move it to the front? Make it real for him or her.

To use the disaster recovery example above, I may ask why should they care, and you may say “because we have the solutions in place to help” or “because disaster is a bad thing and our solution will make it not as bad”. If these answers are applied to the content marketing strategy you’re going to end up with a whole lot of self-promotion that will get lost in the abyss of the ocean of self-promotion where today’s marketing lives.

Tell stories that hit home

Instead, start with a problem, we all know that IT disasters are bad but did you know that for the average small business they can lose up to $8,000 per hour and large businesses up to $700,000?1 Did you know that the average time it takes to recover from the disaster is 18.5 hours? When you frame the topic of conversation in a way that is relevant to your intended audience you immediately answer the original question of why they should care. They should care because when disaster strikes, they will lose thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour and it can take most of a day to recover. With your solution they can cut that time in half, or by two thirds, or whatever your solution can do, all the while saving them money.

We are the ABC Company and we have XYZ solutions look at us, versus, we are the ABC Company and when an inevitable disaster hits your company, and believe us it will, our XYZ solution will help you to quickly recover and save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Only one of those answers the question, “why should they care?” As you move forward in your content creation for your marketing strategy, try to have empathy for the reader. Decision makers are very busy people, so get to the point, show how your company can help, and don’t waste their time. As more people are saddling up for the content marketing game, the space is bound to be loud and messy. Make an effort to set your content apart, create content that doesn’t waste time, gets to the point, and answers the question “why should they care?

Example of telling a story:

The Farmington Hills office of SIS wrote this true story to help their client understand the critical importance of a disaster recovery plan. The DR plan is critical, but as this story illustrates, the testing of the plan is most important. SIS understands their ideal client and what keeps them up at night…

The Attack

On a Sunday in early July of 2017, a form of ransomware slipped through a Google Drive document and brought down a major us-based energy company with thousands of employees. Normally when attacked by ransomware, as the name suggests, a demand in the form of payment is required in order to retrieve the stolen data, but this case was different.

In late June there were various reports of a new wave of ransomware attacks, referred to as a slew of different names including Petya, exPetr, Petrwrap, and NotPetr. After further investigation it was determined that while the virus demanded a ransom once it had infected a system, it was unable to determine the user paying the ransom so this virus is really a wiper disguised as ransomware. It takes your money, and still destroys your data. Although they are some of the rarest kinds of malware, wipers are incredibly destructive and have seen a spike in occurrences in recent years.

The Assessment

Attacks were concentrated in Eastern Europe and Ukraine in particular. A business in the energy sector was attacked by the virus not long before this incident and was written about in the European media. Then a few weeks later, through a shared Google Drive with the business, the virus leaked and wrought havoc on the company’s servers. Due to the fact that the victims were using Windows 2003, a very outdated operating system, the patching was not in place, vulnerabilities were everywhere. With no disaster recovery strategy in place, the company was brought to its’ knees from a data storage standpoint….Complete Story

The importance of visual content emphasized by the changes that occurred across almost every major social network, including Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. At the same time, videos have become powerful tools for brands looking to communicate more easily with their readers.

Important stats regarding visual media for 2017

37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging (38%). (Source)

74% of social media marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing, ahead of blogs (68%) and videos (60%). (Source)

When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. (Source)

Although the marketing department is responsible for the over-arching strategy and implementation of your marketing tactics, content marketing works best when everyone in the company gets behind it. It’s important your colleagues understand your approach and your planned activities so they know where the firm is heading and are aware of any current content marketing campaigns that could be driving lead generation.

Your colleagues don’t have to spend hours on your content marketing, here ae a few tips to help get them started.

Set up a company LinkedIn page

After you’ve set up a LinkedIn page for your firm, get everyone to tag the company into their ‘current job position’ section. This helps affiliate all employees with the company, making it easier for users who search for your firm to find the right contact. It’s important for all firm employees to have a presence across a variety of social media channels. The more relevant channels your employees are on, the more exposure your brand name will get.

Get everyone involved in your blog

Not only does it look a bit more eclectic to have different authors on your blog, but different people have different opinions and areas of expertise. Each employee will bring something different to your blog. Creating a rota where a different person writes a blog each week, or whenever there’s a timely news story they can formulate an opinion on, can help create a bit of structure to your firm’s blog. The individual will want to share the post they’ve written, which all helps keep your firm current and active to its audience.

P.S. Introducing a small incentive into the process, for the author who brings the most traffic to the website, works a treat!

Encourage all employees to follow the firm’s social accounts

This isn’t for boosting your follower count, this is more for widening your post share reach. Once you’ve created a piece of content and it’s been shared across the company social accounts, encourage your employees to share this content, too. The more aware your employees are of the content marketing initiatives happening for the firm, the more informed they’ll sound when potential clients enquire about your services off the back of a piece of content.

It’s important you practice a closed loop approach to your content marketing. If you create a piece of content and someone does ring up asking about your services, it’s important you find out how useful they found the content and what prompted them to contact your company in the first place. It can be a steep learning curve, but once you’ve nailed the process, your content will be much more refined and perfectly targeted to your audiences’ wants and needs!

Customers are looking for information that will enhance their lives. Are you developing content with the reader in mind?

Below is a quick example of an organization that are providing value.

Columbia Sportswear and their What Knot To do App

So what does a knot tying application do with selling outdoor clothing? Columbia was thinking of their client first and what activities are important to them. I guess if you’re heading to the mountains in your Columbia gear, a knot tying app would be helpful..What’s important to your clients? How can you make their lives better?

There’s a reason they call Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram “social” media platforms…they are intended to engage others in social conversations, and not to broadcast messages to the masses. I’m surprised to see some organizations continue to sell or push their products and services before they have earned the trust of their audience. Earning trust or likeability from your potential clients comes from providing value, which can come from delivering solutions to problems, or simply making them laugh. Below are Facebook post, notice number of views (reach) when we provide value and compare to posts when we are selling.

As you can see, we engage more with content that is of interest to our audience. This doesn’t mean they are not interested in your products, there is tremendous brand building when your content is share across everyone’s newsfeed.

For more information on local Oakland County Michigan marketing strategies, please feel free to reach out to our team.

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Are you using images to tell your story? If you create beautiful products, like Milford, Michigan based Blackson Furniture you need to capture the moment with photos. When Blackson was tapped on the shoulder to help create a new entrance for Sparkies Bar and Grill they knew it would be a great opportunity to showcase […]

Write for your audience When writing a case study, white paper, blog post, tweet, or any other type of marketing material aimed at growing your business, do you ever stop and ask yourself “why should they care?” Sure, your business is a certified partner and preferred vendor with software companies X, Y, and Z, and […]

In today’s fast-paced market, it has become more important than ever for companies of all different types to take advantage of today’s technology in an effort to boost their business and reach out to consumers. One of the best and most effective ways to do this is through video marketing. With features such as Periscope, […]